Lawsuit claims exploitation by "S-Town" podcast team

By Stephanie Taylor and Drew Taylor Staff Writers

Friday

Jul 13, 2018 at 12:01 AMJul 14, 2018 at 5:33 PM

The estate of John B. McLemore, a Bibb County man whose life became the subject of a massively popular podcast last year, has sued the creators and producers who they say exploited details of his personal life to make money.

Defendants include Serial Productions LLC, This American Life Public Benefit Corporation, Brian Reed, Chicago Public Media Inc., S-Town, LLC, Serial Podcast LLC and American Whatever LLC. Cargile is asking for the estate to receive any profits made from the selling of advertising featured on the podcast, compensatory damages and punitive damages determined by a jury.

"I am simply doing my duty as administrator of the estate of Mr. McLemore," Cargile wrote in a statement to The Tuscaloosa News. "I have a duty to protect and preserve the assets of the estate for the benefit of the estate's creditors and other beneficiaries, including Mr. McLemore's mother, who is still living."

McLemore first contacted Reed in 2012, asking him to visit his hometown of Woodstock to investigate a murder that Reed quickly learned never occurred. He continued to spend time with and record interviews with McLemore up to June 2015, when McLemore killed himself. After his death, Reed decided to continue his reporting, shifting the focus to McLemore’s life as he discussed him with friends, family and associates for what would become a wildly popular seven-episode podcast. As of July, “S-Town” has been downloaded more than 80 million times by listeners across the world.

The podcast is described on its site as the "unearthing the mysteries of one man's life," attorneys wrote in the lawsuit. The suit was filed by Huntsville attorneys Richard J.R. Raleigh Jr. and Christopher Lockwood of Huntsville firm Wilmer & Lee P.A. and Cooper Shattuck of Cooper Shattuck LLC in Tuscaloosa.

"None of these 'mysteries' are matters of legitimate public concern, nor were these matters that McLemore contacted Reed to investigate or write about," the attorneys wrote in the complaint. "Instead, they generally involved the most private matters of McLemore's life."

The defendants have profited from the use of McLemore's "indicia of identity," the suit claims.

"McLemore never gave consent to Reed of the other defendants to use his indicia of identity for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of, products, goods, merchandise or services," the attorneys wrote. "Additionally, McLemore never gave consent to Reed or the other defendants to broadcast the intimate details of his sexual orientation, and experiences, depressed thoughts, suicidal tendencies financial affairs, physical and mental health issues and his interpersonal relationships with friends, family members and sexual partners."

Although this is the first lawsuit that has been aimed specifically at the “S-Town” team, some of the issues detailed in the complaint have been brought up before by the press. Since its release, “S-Town” and how it chronicled McLemore’s life has been a point of both praise and criticism, specifically with how the podcast discussed so much of his life after he was dead.

Writing in the New Yorker after the show’s debut, writer Sarah Larson ultimately praised the podcast, albeit with some reservations.

“‘S-Town’ helps advance the art of audio storytelling, daringly, thoughtfully, and with a journalist’s love of good details and fascinating material—but it also edges us closer to a discomfiting realm of well-intentioned voyeurism on a scale we haven’t quite experienced before,” Larson wrote.

Other writers questioned Reed’s way of outing McLemore as queer. Vox’s Aja Romano took issue with one part of the show where McLemore, off the record, told Reed about a sexual encounter he had with another man. Ultimately, Reed retold part of what McLemore told him, but did not name the other person. In fact, Reed told a story about talking to the unnamed man about McLemore and their relationship, although it was not recorded.

“While listening to this sequence, I felt deeply uncomfortable and worried that I was participating in the unwitting outing of one queer man over the dead body of another,” Romano wrote. “And given that the episode’s main storyline was not only incredibly moving on its own, but had little to do with this information, I don’t believe it was worth it, or that we necessarily deserve to understand the parts of a person’s life that they’ve explicitly requested not be shared with the world.”

Romano went on to discuss how the show's reporting and unanswered questions about McLemore's sexual relationships when the subject in question was dead did not feel right to her.

"Each of these questions is structured and dealt with as a major dramatic plot point," Romano wrote. "When tied to the privacy of a dead man — one whose suicide has already been treated as a spoiler — this use of real life as drama feels exploitative."

On Episode 6, McLemore told Reed while he was recording that he had been “on both sides of the fence,” meaning he had had relationships with both men and women. Explaining why he told part of McLemore’s off-the-record comment to him that was not recorded, Reed said that, among other things, he made the decision to tell it partly due to the corroboration of the same story from from others and that McLemore was unaffected by the show. The last part of Reed’s explanation prefaced an episode that dealt with McLemore’s romantic relationships.

“Lastly, what John disclosed and where it led me after he died helped me understand him so much more and I think trying to understand another person is a worthwhile thing to do,” Reed said on the show.

Cargile is suing under Alabama's "Right of Publicity Act," which states a person's indicia of identity can't be used to sell items, endorse products or solicit donations without their permission.

Since its debut, “S-Town” has won a Peabody Award and continues to be downloaded with the backing of advertisers. Last month, Participant Media bought the rights to turn the show into a movie. In a reporter first published in Deadline.com, director Tom McCarthy and playwright Samuel Hunter were in negotiations to direct and write the film respectively.